Page 34 of Frankly, My Dear

Fleur had never shown up at their hotel after the meeting in the rotunda, and James had forbidden Selene to go to the cottage the young girl shared with Victor on Rampart Street. Selene obeyed him, grudgingly, but she had sent the girl a note, without James’s knowledge, repeating her offer of assistance. Selene could only hope that Fleur would remember the invitation to come to Bayou Noir if she needed help.

Putting her concerns aside, Selene pulled the damp cloth of her white spencer, a sort of antebellum blouse, away from her neck and tried to blow inside the steamy confines of her garment, to no avail. Her breath was as hot as the humid air surrounding them. When they reclaimed her gown from the dressmaker, James had purchased four spencers for her, along with two dark skirts and three new gowns. They would probably all rot from perspiration before the week was out, she thought ruefully.

“How do you people stand this heat?” Selene asked Reba.

“You get used to it.”

“I never will. Already the makeup I applied this morning has melted away. And when my deodorant runs out, I’ll probably smell as ripe as everyone else here.” That should be something to look forward to, Selene mused. With a mother who had started her on antiperspirants when she was nine years old, Selene didn’t think she’d smelled her own sweat in her entire life.

“You think I smell?” Reba asked, raising her chin in affront.

“Not you, honey, but just about everyone else. People start out fresh in the morning here, but by noon they can’t help having a case of prime body odor with all this sweating. Will it be cooler once we move inland?”

“Sometimes it’s cooler in the shade,” Reba said, not very enthusiastically.

“How will we sleep on those glorified rafts?”

“The men will camp on the bayou banks. We’ll sleep under the canopies on the flatboats,” she said, pointing to the primitive, open-sided shelters erected in the center of each wide raft. “We can pull mosquito netting down around us at nighttime.”

“Why couldn’t we just continue on the steam packet, like we did from New Orleans?”

Reba looked askance at her. “Do you have any idea where we’re going? Steamboats could never navigate the narrow passageways.”

“Oh.”

“Even the flatboats can only go so far when the streams are low.”

James had told her his plantation was on a remote bayou in “Tara-bon” Parish. Obviously it was more remote than she’d first imagined. And the way Reba looked away guiltily every time she asked a question about the plantation made Selene decidedly uncomfortable.

Hmmm. She’d been picturing a Gone With the Wind style mansion nestling on a green lawn along a glorious river. Okay, she admitted to herself with a grimace, she’d probably even been hoping that James would turn into Rhett Butler. Every woman’s fantasy.

Hah! Fat chance!

She looked down the riverbank where James and Fergus, both shirtless, were working along with the slaves, loading the heavy supplies onto the boats. She had to give James his due—he worked as hard as his slaves, whom he’d released from their chains as soon as they’d left New Orleans. Sweat glistened on his wide shoulders and muscled arms. Lean and sinewy, he looked like a man who worked hard for a living, not an indolent planter.

Nope, he definitely was no Clark Gable. Then again, she decided, scrutinizing his tapering waist and lean hips, he might be better. Especially if he would flash that dimple once in a while. Selene had to be realistic, though. James wouldn’t consider her much of a Scarlett O’Hara. He always made smart remarks about how bony she felt in his arms. Or that she was too old to be attractive.

On the other hand, she’d noticed a look of appreciation in his eyes sometimes when she’d caught him off guard. What if he really did find her attractive? What if he stormed all her defenses and swept her off her feet, like good old Rhett, carrying her away to his bedchamber where he would have his way with her? Selene giggled. Have his way with me? I’m losing my mind.

Still, for one brief, tantalizing second, Selene’s thoughts wandered and she tried to imagine the brooding planter in the role of the romantic Rhett Butler. They would be standing at the base of a wide, curving staircase, arguing…

“You’ve been teasing me from the day we first met, Selene. Your time of reckoning has finally arrived.”

James’s wonderfully expressive eyes flickered with sensual sparks of blue ice as he swept her up in his arms and proceeded to carry her up the stairs.

She fought against his steely arms, as well as her wild attraction to a man she should not love. To no avail.

She tried not to think of the massive four-poster bed that awaited their bodies at the end of the hall. Against her will, she wondered if she would finally experience all the sexual delights her body craved.

As if he had read her thoughts, James’s hot lips nuzzled the curve of her neck. He whispered hoarsely, “Tonight…tonight, my love, I will discover all of your body, all your secrets. You will beg me for mercy and scream when I give it, finally.”

Selene moaned. The tips of her breasts hardened into aching pebbles, and blood rushed madly to all the erotic points that he would soon investigate.

“Why are you standing there looking like a moon-eyed calf?”

“Huh?” Selene emerged slowly and embarrassingly from her reverie.

“Are you going to stand there all day like a broom handle?”